Traveler (18 page)

The sky was blanked out with heavy clouds, so Io could not see the moon, but she didn’t need a lunar clock to tell it was nearly the witching hour. The Halloween crowds were growing manic, almost impossible to control, high on drugs, high on booze, high on mischief and dark magic.

“Time to go,” she whispered to herself.

Io left the shadowy doorway where she’d been loitering and pushed her way into the throngs, heading for her chosen hive entrance on Edmund Place. She wore a cheap black cape that covered a tool belt outfitted with gun, knife, salt and hair spray instead of the usual screwdriver, pliers, and wire cutters. Her face was hidden behind a latex troll mask. Jack had chosen it for her.

He really did have a morbid sense of humor.

Her most important evening accessories were not visible. They were the enlarging spell that Jack had
picked up while entering the city on his last trip out, and the fire spell, which, after careful tuning, could ignite almost anything she touched and burn it to ash. Of course, she hadn’t been able to try the spells out on any magical beings to see if they worked with supernatural beasties like gargoyles. Not that she wanted to! Io shuddered and pushed the thought away.

With these two magics, she planned to take the can of hair spray and turn it into a flamethrower. The salt in her belt would also be multiplied until it covered the underground in sterile snow. Looking at the crowds, she hoped fervently the havoc would all stay belowground. She wasn’t trying to burn or purify the topside city—but the crops and the soil they grew in had to be destroyed-forever. She was going to march through Goblin City’s underground like General Sherman going to the sea.

There might be casualties up top. She had to accept that.

Fire and salt were good for another reason. They were effective goblin-stoppers, should keep the beasties from creeping up behind her as she retreated. That meant she only had to watch her front and sides.

She was hoping passionately that most of the goblins were topside for Halloween. They seemed to be. The streets were full of them. She was quite happy to be a saboteur, but as the night went on and she saw the monsters reveling with the tourists, she was
less enthused about being their executioner. They were buglike, but bugs that seemed to have feelings too.

She checked her watch to confirm what she felt, and then lengthened her stride. She began using magic to get people out of her way. Jack’s bit of death-fey intimidation juju worked like a charm on the distracted partyers who split like the sea on the prow of a ship.

Io tried to psych herself up as she would before a game, but of course this wasn’t just sport and it made the task harder. In a game there would only be two ends of a field or court to worry about, and only two teams to keep track of. But tonight she and Jack were after many goals. They had many enemies. And there were at least three teams in the field, possibly a fourth: tourists, goblins, those on the side of angels—Io smiled at the idea of her and Jack in wings and halos—and maybe H.U.G. The home team had the advantage of numbers and ruthlessness, and there were no referees to keep the fight fair. Io doubted the goblins would be using Marquis of Queensberry rules, so she, Jack, Zayn, and Cisco, couldn’t afford to either.

Synchronicity would be an important player too. If Io began or ended her arsonistic distraction too late, her friends might all be caught and subdued through sheer numbers of goblins returning to the hive at dawn. But Io still had to give enough time for Zayn to rescue Chloe—and for Jack to get to
Horroban, deal with him, and then escape topside—before she fired the tunnels and trapped their enemies inside. Both she and Jack were loaded with lots of protective magic, and Jack had the steel fist, which should be able to remove any obstacles that blocked his path. Yet the fire she was about to loose was a magical one, fed with two supercharged spells that had never been mingled before, on a night when raw magic rode the air in nearly tangible waves of limitless fuel. There was no way to predict accurately what it would do once she unleashed it.

She was especially worried about Zayn and Chloe being slow to escape.
Chloe…
Even career criminals had a certain system of ethics they honored. A thief or confidence man would abhor a childmolester or rapist as often as anyone did. That often wasn’t the case with goblin-fruit junkies.

She’d warned Zayn, “You’ve got to watch Chloe. She has probably been brainwashed to hate all of us. Horroban would have done this right off. And she knows if you take her away from here she’ll never taste goblin fruit again. She may very well turn on you the first chance she gets. And she’ll drag her feet all the way.”

Zayn nodded, but hadn’t changed his mind about rescuing her.

Poor Zayn—he had it bad. But…Io shrugged. There was nothing she could do about it now. It was in the lap of the goddess, who’d have to look after the ill-fated love affair; Io was busy saving mankind.

The last part of the night’s plan was to have Jack’s buddy blow up the perfume factory. Casualties, Cisco had assured Jack, would be minimal because it was in the business quarter and would be closed for the night. Besides, most tourists would be rushing down to the red-light district—for once quite literally full of red light—to see what the underground fires were about.

Looking at the packed streets, Io wondered if this was realistic thinking. People might be too drunk to think clearly about what to do in an emergency or pay any attention to where they were. Of course, on the plus side, the factory wouldn’t go up until three
A.M.
That would give tourists a chance to tire and go home, and the worst of the raw magic would have subsided back into the earth, returning some wits to those who were overwhelmed by its power.

In spite of her earlier, impulsive words to Jack about having a weenie roast at the bonfire of Goblin Town, Io would have objected to this part of the arrangement because of the remote chance of hurting the Halloween tourists—except for one thing. There was no way of knowing how much of the addictive perfume might have already been bottled from earlier harvests or where it was stored. If they had had more time, they could have gone in again and investigated the factory more fully, but the hours and minutes of preparation time had simply run out. Finding Horroban and the fruit fields had
been their first priority. They hadn’t discovered any stash.

All Io could do was hope, and remind herself that the people reveling around her were dead anyway if Horroban succeeded in his plans. They might already be addicts if they had been to Glashtin’s club.

“’scuse me.” A drunk reeled back from Io, staggering into the street. His glazed eyes showed traces of fear as he looked at her mask. The man
should
be afraid. Tonight she was more dangerous than any real troll.

Io nodded once but didn’t answer. Her throat was too tight. Bottled-up fear and revved magic were both trying to escape, and slowly strangling her as she kept swallowing against them. It was painful, an all-but-intolerable burning in her throat, but all she could do was ignore the fear and the magic until it was time to let them free.

So, here was the team. Here was the plan. Io thought again of Jack, already on his way into the hive. Of all of them, he had the hardest job, and the most dangerous. He needed every bit of power and luck that Fate could spare.

Jack…

Instead of continuing to try and psych herself into battle mode, Io bowed her head and began praying to the goddess for his well-being. Her lips moved behind her mask, perspiration beading on her forehead and running down her cheeks. She was nearly certain it was perspiration and not tears.

The
please, please, please,
of her prayers matched her footsteps and thudding heart as she marched down the increasingly deserted street.

Goddess! Why hadn’t she listened to the magic and told him that she loved him? Her fear of love might kill him.

Jack passed through a more formal arch that marked the start of Horroban’s home—
goblinium grand
in style perhaps—and went under the structure he thought of as the clock tower, though it actually was more of a lopsided cylinder and had no clock in it, just a half-formed ugly face crossed with sticks jutting out of the south side two-thirds of the way up. What its purpose was, he could not guess. It seemed ornamental, but goblins as a rule did not go in much for art.

Next there was a moat ringed with torches. Io hadn’t liked this place at all. Jack understood. It was impossible to judge just how deep it ran because the water was quite black and tarry, showing nothing but the flickering orange fire on its black surface. Yet, he was convinced that the circular lake ran very, very deep. It
felt
deep.

It didn’t seem possible that anything could live in it, but Jack was willing to bet that something did. Horroban wasn’t the type to do things solely for aesthetics, and there weren’t any other watchdogs about. At another time, he might have been curious enough to toss in a stone and see what happened,
but whatever was down there could just stay down there. Jack didn’t plan on making any social calls on swamp monsters that night. One should always let sleeping dogs and monsters lie.

The ceremonial entrance to Horroban’s stronghold had been stolen off of someone’s Moorish castle. The door was thick, studded with iron nails, and it was barred—but that wasn’t a problem. Finally calling upon the spell he’d been charging all day, Jack wrapped himself more deeply in his muffling invisibility and then jammed his fist through the old oak portal. He shoved the inner bar aside, doing his best to keep the sound to a minimum.

Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in…or I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in
.

As Jack shoved his uninjured hand deeper into the wood, he blessed Io for her craftwork that had altered the spell into something so useful. She was a master at making silk purses out of sows’ ears. Jack could make spells strong, but it was simply brute force prevailing over weaker magic. If he pushed too hard, he could break spells, collapsing their structures like aluminum cans. Io coaxed and charmed and bent subtly. Her spells were flexible and strong. They stretched. Look what she had done with his own core magic.
Love me, Jack
, she had said, shifting the ancient protective word charm into something else.

And he did love her, goddess help him. Against all will and common sense, he loved her.

The timing of this revelation sucked, but it did add incentive to finish this job quickly and safely.

Jack pushed more power into his spell and shoved harder on the wedged bar. There was some noise when the brace hit the floor and when the hinges creaked open, but no one seemed interested in seeing who was destroying Horroban’s door. Most likely everyone was up top partying. It was nearly midnight. Most magical beings would be higher than kites.

And Io would be in the tunnels now, getting ready to loose her magical conflagration.

Jack moved on through the black arcade, being just one more shadow among all the other shades that crouched there in the windowless mansion. He went slowly because the magic was thick here—thick and evil and waiting. There were no lights of any kind, and there were certain to be magical trip wires and other more physical traps. Jack was betting that that was the unwelcoming kind of guy Horroban was.

The corridor had been built all out of bad angles and uneven surfaces that had no sympathy for the preferences of human height and clumsy feet. But Jack had no trouble knowing where he needed to go. As he had told Io, a magical being’s inner sorcery always knew where to seek out other sorcery. No darkness was deep enough to obscure that path.

Following the psychic slime trail of Horroban’s now familiar black art, Jack went down a narrow
stair cleft into the stone. Naturally, this would be Horroban’s choice of locale: the deepest, darkest, closest spot to the upswell of magical power, which would peak at midnight. Sorcery Central.

Jack wiped the sweat from his face.

Goddess willing, there’d be no peak for the goblin king tonight, no nasty magical climax to make him shivery with wicked delight. Death would call on Horroban instead, and he wouldn’t offer the goblin king a chance to use the mitigating charm he had donated to Io. This was one goblin whose heart was going to stop.
Eat it, drink, love it
—it didn’t matter. Horroban was about to die. He’d die so the world would be safe. So
Io
would be safe.

Io didn’t put the manhole cover back in place. She wanted her retreat left open since she probably would be heading back at a flat-out run, quite possibly with half the goblin population from beneath the Motor City on her heels. There would certainly be fire chasing her.

She walked silently, but boldly, heading for the fields outside Horroban’s headquarters. She would start there and retreat back to Lutin’s special hydroponics project, and then take out all the fields back to Edmund Street.

It would have been nice to take her mask off and allow the sweat on her face to run free, but a bit of concealment would buy her a measure of safety and time if she were spotted from a distance.

“Where are Xanthe’s pet spies?” the voice, familiar from television, asked.
William Hamilton. Horroban.
He didn’t speak in goblin. Perhaps all the surgery had altered his vocal chords so that he could no longer produce the proper sounds.

Jack finished checking for wards on the chamber door, disabling the ones he found, but knowing there would be more inside the mirrored room beyond where all the reflective surfaces would increase the goblins’ power.

He was ready, and it was time, but…he decided to watch and listen to his prey for a moment before sending spells and bullets into the magic-charged space.

It was an odd moment—
the moment
—brought about by Fate, and it seemed that the occasion should be marked somehow. If nothing else, Jack
thought it was likely that he would never be this close to true evil again.

Also, he might learn something useful for later on. Information was power and the second coin of the realm. And Jack wanted info in a bad way because, though he doubted that Horroban had actually uncovered the magical generator, the goblin warlord had gotten hold of something very powerful, very old, and very magical that was allowing him to focus the magic that dwelled down here.

“No one’s seen ’em lately,” several warped Glashtins answered. The halves of the weather goblin’s face that Jack could see in the multiple mirrors were all green iridescence under the glowing plaster ceiling. He sounded drunk and held a brandy snifter loosely in his upper right hand. “Figured they’d go back to Lutin’s after sneaking around down here, but they never went back. They haven’t been in the club either. Hille’s real disappointed about that. She had plans for the little fey girl after the show tonight.”

“I see. Neveling?” the calm voice asked next. “You are
quite
certain they haven’t been in the factory? Jack Frost’s reputation among our contacts in law enforcement does not suggest that he is the sort of man to simply abandon a project.”

“Oh yes, I’m quite sure,” a new voice said. “I’ve left Slav and Plait there to roam at will. He’d have been eaten if he came back.” The goblin perfumer’s voice was high; his surgeon had not been as skilled as Horroban’s in manufacturing the perfect human
tenor. Or perhaps the goblin was nervous. “I think they have given up. Our contacts in the police department haven’t seen Jack in days and believe he has left town. And, anyway, there wasn’t anything to find at the factory. Since her spy got eaten, Xanthe has been most cooperative about discouraging H.U.G. from doing anything
active
. The perfume release will go as planned.”

“It is nice to know that Xanthe has cooperated. Not that it will do her any good. The little sister dies tonight.
Ah, but how?
Let’s see. Give her to the trolls? They’ve been very patient. Would you like that, Toc?”

“Sure. Thanks, boss!” a troll, presumably Toc, said. His several long-nosed reflections grinned, showing double rows of jagged teeth. “Me and the boys appreciate it. We ain’t had us a girl for a long time.”

“She’s at the factory,” Neveling spoke up in a fretful voice. Several misshapen versions of the perfume maker pulled at their identical bow ties. “She’ll have to be fetched and taken elsewhere. I don’t want the mess at work. The last killing ruined the carpet!”

Horroban sighed. “Fine. I don’t think Toc is particular about where he takes his meals. But be quiet now. It is nearly time. How I have waited for
thissss
night!” Horroban’s tongue flicked out quickly. He closed his eyes and began ‘mainlining power—that was the only word that Jack could think of to describe what was happening.

Jack watched, fascinated, as Horroban’s modified
skin began to glow and his dark hair grew large, perhaps raised at the roots as the current of swelling magic contracted his scalp muscles. His perfect, capped teeth appeared as the lips pulled away in an unnatural grin. His eyebrows and cheeks drew back as well, making his lower jaw appear longer and even more pointed.

Everyone obediently fell silent, bowing their heads. They looked respectful, but unable to enjoy the magic the way Horroban did. Lutin, in fact, appeared rather ill and kept swallowing convulsively.

Time to go
.

Jack shifted a bit so that he could better see where the troll Toc was standing. Neveling and Glashtin were dressed in formal wear and didn’t seem to be armed, but the troll would be. Yes, he had a gun holstered on his left side, but he wouldn’t have a clear shot at Jack without moving. Trolls were slow.

Satisfied that the mirrors hadn’t deceived him and that he knew where everyone was, Jack shifted his attention back to the creature he was planning to exterminate.

Evil had chosen a less than prepossessing face. It was not extraordinarily ugly, nor extraordinarily beautiful. It was not extraordinarily anything. Yet however modest his wrappings, Horroban
was
extraordinary, and Jack respected that fact even as he detested what the creature was doing.

Horroban had aimed high and succeeded—the best law school, then the state senate, next a seat in
congress. And his final stop was the White House. It seemed inevitable. The public loved his southern witticisms delivered in his soft, slow, drawling style. He was homely as all modified goblins were, but still looked good in the spotlight. His supporters felt sure he would look even better standing behind the presidential podium.

It was hard to imagine how he had gotten where he was. His pedigree was impeccable, seemingly impossible to forge. Yet somehow it had been stolen at some time in the real man’s life without anyone noticing. Horroban had slipped into this man’s shoes without a single misstep and without leaving any betraying footprints behind as clues. He’d taken William Hamilton’s identity, his power, his wife, his children, and almost certainly his life.

Horroban sat there in his wing-backed chair, seemingly a man of wealth and authority, dressed impeccably in an Italian wool suit, dark red tie, and handmade shoes. Of course, it was anyone’s guess as to what sort of animal the leather for those shoes had come from—Xanthe’s mole would be Jack’s first bet. Or maybe the man whose identity he had stolen. It would amuse a goblin to daily tread on the man into whose “shoes he’d stepped.”

Worst of all, Horroban was smugly certain he was going to get away with poisoning the whole human world. It could happen, too, if Jack failed.

Horroban was surrounded by protection both physical and magical. Jack knew beyond any doubt
that his own death spells wouldn’t be enough to kill the goblin king so close to midnight, not unless they touched—and that was not something that Jack wanted. But a long-distance, nonmagical hit was fine with him. He’d prepared for this eventuality. Jack’s hand slipped inside his jacket and he unholstered his gun and aimed it in one smooth movement.

Time to go.

Still, he hesitated with a finger on the trigger, waiting for a last miracle, a trick of magic that would allow the cup of cold-blooded murder to pass his lips without him having to drink. Jack had killed—many, many times. But never in cold blood. It was more difficult than he’d imagined.

As he hesitated, a small foreign doubt entered his mind, and finding fertile soil, it blossomed insidiously. Its petals of misgiving unfurled like an umbrella, getting between Jack’s body and the light of his will.

What if Horroban wasn’t a goblin? What if he was just a benevolent human who was trying to unite the species in peace? He didn’t look like a goblin, did he?

Jack’s eyelids began to twitch and his palms to sweat.

No! That wasn’t true. Horroban was a goblin, a killer. He’d just heard the monster say he was going to feed Chloe to the trolls!

How could he think that? It was all a misunderstanding. He had no proof. None
.

No, but—

Something popped open in Jack’s mind, sending small ricochets of pain bouncing off the interior of his skull.

He should put the gun down and reconsider what he was doing. Jack was the one who was planning death—not Horroban. He was a death fey, an evil carrier of doom. He should maybe even turn the gun around and point it at himself. That would be the best thing. He should do it now! Now!

Horroban’s eyes flashed open, staring into the space Jack occupied. In that instant, Jack could see the goblin inside the man. The pupils were slits, each iris running all the way to the eyelids. The entire ocular cavity glowed with black sorcery. It was sorcery that the goblin was using to invade Jack’s mind, the white noise of his mind-rending scream causing some form of neural jamming.

The goblin’s mouth opened, ready to speak words of power that would force Jack into turning the pistol on himself. Part of Jack wanted that, believed he deserved it. The rest of him cried out for help to finish the job before it was too late.

Jack! Jack, what’s wrong?
Io’s voice cut through the manic screaming, breaking through the magic blanket that was blotting out his brain and will, and giving him something to hold on to. He blessed the telepathy that had grown up between them.
Jack Frost, answer me! Right now, or I’m coming in after you!

Io! He couldn’t let her near this!

Jack’s hand steadied. Not giving Horroban a chance to articulate any part of a suicide spell, Jack ignored the brain-ripping screams of Horroban’s subliminal voice and carefully put two rounds into the goblin’s head, and then one in the monster’s chest for good measure. He doubted the creature actually had a heart, but in case he did have something there, it was better to pulp it into something that couldn’t be eaten or used in some spell by other goblins.

Immediately, the foreign voice stopped screaming in Jack’s brain, the echoes slowing dying and leaving Jack’s mind blessedly empty, a crater blasted clear by a searing bomb.

Jack let out a slow breath, his gun hand lowering to his side. His whole body was trembling, awash in adrenaline and foreign magic that was no longer being guided and therefore rushing about purposelessly.

Jack?
Io’s voice was louder now.

It’s okay. I’m all right now. Don’t come here.

Swear by the goddess!
she demanded.

I swear.

And he was all right. It had worked. Jack’s invisibility spell had stifled the soft sounds of the gun that the man-made muffler had not. Standing five feet away, the others hadn’t heard a thing. With their heads still bowed and their eyes down cast, no one seemed to notice Horroban slumping deeper into
his chair, his eyelids lowering halfway as the light faded from his eyes.

Jack stood shaking and amazed, and again blessed Io for the tweaking she had done to his spell. It felt like a grenade had exploded in his head, but no one had heard Jack cry out. No one moved. They hadn’t felt any of it, not the mental battle, not the directed magic, not the death. The spell had held its shield even when Jack wasn’t in control. It had held fast in the face of the strongest sorcery he had ever encountered.

And thanks to it, Horroban was dead.

Horroban was dead!

Jack realized that he could leave right then and it would be several seconds—valuable seconds—before anyone grasped what had happened. Wrapped in invisibility, Jack could be out and away, and no one would ever know that he had been the one to off Horroban. He could hook up with Io and they could escape at once—go far away, and neither of them would have to confront this awful magic again.

He wanted to—with all his heart, he wanted to flee, to run away from the awesome magic that Horroban had used to try to kill him.

But that would be leaving the job half done, and the rest of the merry band of mass murderers still alive and plotting. There’d be no White House, but they’d still have fruit, perfume, and a plan.

Damnation!

And they knew about Io and Zayn. Goblins hadn’t heard the one about carrying vengeance to the grave but no further. They wouldn’t shrug off Horroban’s death as a casualty of war. They’d hunt Jack and Io and Zayn forever. Chloe as well, if she weren’t already dead. And they would go right on with their arrangement to poison the world with goblin-fruit perfume. Why not? There was nothing to stop them.

But he could put an end to their deadly stratagems tonight. If all the conspirators died, and their genetically altered fruit went with them, there wouldn’t be anyone left to carry on Horroban’s legacy.

All he had to do was confront one more time the black magic running wild in that room. Go into that maelstrom, keep a hold on his sanity for a few seconds, and let his gun do its work. Without Horroban to direct this city’s magic against him, he could probably manage the task.

No!
Io protested.
Whatever it is, Jack, don’t do it!

Sorry, little fey.

Jack didn’t want to do it, but he’d have to go into the room to get Toc, Glashtin, and Neveling. He had no clean line of fire from the doorway—and that meant he’d have to leave his own protective magic outside the door. The ravenous power welling up in the room would try to strip his brain and gather up his magic as he stepped inside. It might even turn his own core magic against him. He had no defenses
against his own magic—none. Jack couldn’t risk it. That was rule one of magical self-defense: Don’t go into battle with any weapon that could be turned against you.

You won’t be able to hear me!
Io said, apparently doing the math and realizing what he was going to try.
Jack, don’t do it. I’ll get the fruit. We’ll stop them later. We’ll get the fruit, the factory. We’ll have time to make another plan.

He wished passionately that it were true.

The odds were three to one against him, and the troll was definitely armed. Glashtin had strong internal magic and might be able to use the power in the room. That made him dangerous. Lutin was an unknown, but that didn’t mean he could be discounted.

Jack thought of Io, conjured a picture of her face. Then he pictured her body after the trolls had been at her.

Three to one. And free-ranging, carnivorous magic was surging through the room, looking for a place to manifest itself, looking for someone to use. Not great odds, but he had to see this through. Even if he didn’t make it out alive.